Some industrial preparations of food products include the process of shaping unbaked dough pieces before the subsequent steps of the preparation, typically consisting of garnishing, freezing and packing the products. The dough pieces can also be simply packed as such. They are usually made of bread or flaky type dough and are provided in various sizes, shapes, thicknesses and consistencies. Appropriate apparatuses are used along the processing line to form, knead, roll and cut the dough pieces.
One example of such industrial preparation is the production of pizzas. The dough pieces used for the pizzas are sometimes provided with rolled edge or edges to create an elevated peripheral portion that prevents the toppings from falling or flowing out of the dough piece during the preparation or when cooked and served by the customers. It also gives a better appearance to the final products. However, rolled edge or edges were hitherto difficult to realise on an industrial basis since this operation was done manually and required a large number of persons. Such task is tedious for the workers and costly for the manufacturer. Yet, large quality variations were observed from one dough piece to another since the final result of the manual rolling operation depends in most part on the skills and concentration of each individual.
The object of the present invention is to provide an apparatus capable of mechanically rolling the edge or edges of a dough piece to form an elevated peripheral portion.
More particularly, the present invention provides a device for rolling an edge of a dough piece that comprises a first mechanism for making a friction engagement with the edge of the dough piece and a second mechanism for moving the first mechanism inwards, relative to the edge of the dough piece so that the edge is forced to roll on itself. For instance, this can be realised by a first plate having a plurality of elongated guiding slots. A plurality of followers are slidably mounted in corresponding slots of the first plate. A dough-engaging finger is connected to each follower. The fingers are located under the first plate and moved relative to the dough piece by a finger moving mechanism.
A detailed description of the present invention will now be given with reference to the appended figures.